Very confused (leaders, left communism etc.)

[Luisrah]

I have lately grown very confuse about certain communist leaders and tendencies.

Starting. I would like if someone could explain to me (in few words)(and maybe some more elaborate ones) what's the difference between left communism and marxism-leninism.

Also, I'd like some thoughts on Lenin.
While I hear communists saying that Lenin was true to the marxist ideas and to the Bolshevik revolution (although near the end of his rule it started to fade) while I heard others saying he was anti-worker and some more things which in my young view of communism makes me ''think'' he wasn't a communist. (well if he is anti-worker, which is the class that is supposed to start ruling after the revolution, how is he a communist?)

By this stage you probably have already understood the gravity of this confusion.
In fact, this site has actually created a lot of confusion in me too, because of this, and the fact that the Marxist-Leninist group (which was the one that I thought I was more identified with) in this forum says that it mostly agrees to what Stalin did (someone who I always thought to not be a true communist since enslaved people and betrayed the Bolshevik ideas or values). Also, I am too confused with the fact that there are a lot of Maoists (and some stalinists) here when I thought that they gave communism a bad name. Even further, I was educated (by those who turned me into a lefty) into thinking that Trotsky wasn't a true communist too (one that was true to the bolshevik ideals) and that neither him nor Stalin were fit to rule after Lenin.

I think I'm very confused, and maybe I'm confused about thinking that too.

[Spawn of Stalin]

Left Communists oppose national liberation movements and the idea of a vanguard, the movement itself was born out of the October revolution, opposing the Bolsheviks and the theories which would later become Leninism and Marxism-Leninism. To be honest it sounds like you need to read some non-sectarian literature, or at least look at both sides of the story, especially when it comes to Stalin and Trotsky, since you think both were anti-Communist, I would suggest reading some of their work.

[Luisrah]

Left Communists oppose national liberation movements and the idea of a vanguard, the movement itself was born out of the October revolution, opposing the Bolsheviks and the theories which would later become Leninism and Marxism-Leninism. To be honest it sounds like you need to read some non-sectarian literature, or at least look at both sides of the story, especially when it comes to Stalin and Trotsky, since you think both were anti-Communist, I would suggest reading some of their work.

I get in a deeper confusion when I hear of national liberation and vanguard (which I don't know what is)

But I don't think they were anti-communist, I was just told that they were communists, but not marxists (being marxism the original, thus the ''true'' communism) and that Lenin was.

So what do you reccomend me reading?

[Spawn of Stalin]

The vanguard is the party which leads the proletarian revolution, in the case of the Russians it was the Bolsheviks, this was an idea outlined by Lenin in a pamphlet called What Is To Be Done? Left Communists, along with anarchists, oppose the idea of the vanguard party, they believe that the proletarian revolution will only truly succeed if it is the workers themselves that take control or the state and the means of production.

You seem to be confused about which ideas you do and do not agree with, you say that Stalin and Trotsky were not true Communists, but it sounds like you are just going on what you have heard from other pieces or opinion based writings. Read Marx (if you haven't already), Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky, also, read some Rosa Luxemburg if you are interested in learning about left Communism, although she wasn't actually involved in it, her ideas are somewhat related to those held by ultra-leftists.

[revolution inaction]

I think that lenin, trotsky and starlin all intended, at least to start with, to create a communist society but that the methods they used where incapable of producing communism and in practice they repressed real revolutionaries.
The Bolsheviks and workers control (http://libcom.org/library/the-bolsheviks-and-workers-control-solidarity-group), My Disillusionment in Russia (http://libcom.org/library/my-disillusionment-in-russia-emma-goldman) and The Truth About Kronstadt (http://libcom.org/library/truth-about-kronstadt) are all useful for getting an idea what russia was like under the bolsheviks, and exactly how revolutionary the bolsheviks were in practice.

[JohannGE]

I think I'm very confused, and maybe I'm confused about thinking that too.

Don't worry about it too much, and never forget that many of the people telling you stuff are likely to be as confused as you.

Not many would have your courage to admit it though. ;)

Keep reading and thinking and you will come to your own ideas, they may change with time and understanding but they are the only ones worth having!
-

[Leo]

While I hear communists saying that Lenin was true to the marxist ideas and to the Bolshevik revolution (although near the end of his rule it started to fade) while I heard others saying he was anti-worker and some more things which in my young view of communism makes me ''think'' he wasn't a communist. (well if he is anti-worker, which is the class that is supposed to start ruling after the revolution, how is he a communist?)

Left communists have historically been the first and most solid supporter of the October Revolution, and have founded the Communist Parties in countries like Italy and Germany where the revolution was closest to victory. They also had a majority in the Bolshevik Party at one point after the revolution. So left communists do not consider Lenin or the Bolsheviks to anti-worker, or counter-revolutionary, or bourgeois. We are not Leninists either though, we do not have a fetish over his personality (and that shared by all varieties of all sorts of "Marxist-Leninists" is something Lenin himself would be disgusted by), we do not think he was always right, we think that at times he was a centrist, at times he made serious mistakes, at times he resorted to opportunism and sectarianism, while not denying that he was a sincere proletarian revolutionary and a genuine internationalist - in other words we are not afraid to actually evaluate what he said and criticize him.


In fact, this site has actually created a lot of confusion in me too, because of this, and the fact that the Marxist-Leninist group (which was the one that I thought I was more identified with) in this forum says that it mostly agrees to what Stalin did

Well, Stalin was the inventor of the term "Marxist-Leninist".


someone who I always thought to not be a true communist since enslaved people and betrayed the Bolshevik ideas or values

We think that Stalin was an agent of the counter-revolution in Russia and the gravedigger of the revolution. He was the chief representative of the bourgeois class which destroyed the working class spirit, consciousness and power of the October Revolution, and murdered the most noble fighters of the communist cause.


Even further, I was educated (by those who turned me into a lefty) into thinking that Trotsky wasn't a true communist too (one that was true to the bolshevik ideals) and that neither him nor Stalin were fit to rule after Lenin.

Trotsky, for all his faults (and we think there were many, mainly because of his opportunism and sectarianism as well as numerous errors of action, such as his role in the suppression of the Kronstadt rising) was at the end of the day a genuine revolutionary who died as a fighter of the communist struggle against counter-revolution. One of his greatest qualities, on the other hand, was that he did not take power individually in Russia from Stalin even when he could have because he was, for all his theoretical confusions, convinced that the determining factor was that of classes, not individuals who rule.


Left Communists oppose national liberation movements and the idea of a vanguard

It is true that left communist oppose national liberation movements, among with all other nationalist movements, all other bourgeois movements and so forth. It is not true that left communists oppose the idea of a vanguard, left communists are for the establishment of the vanguard part of the working class - we simply think that this party should not substitute itself for the class, attempt to take actions on behalf of the class, take state-power itself instead of the class and so forth. What we are for is vanguard part of the proletariat, not over it.


the movement itself was born out of the October revolution, opposing the Bolsheviks

This again is false. Russian left communists themselves were exclusively Bolsheviks. They were Bolsheviks who were critical of other militants and leaders in the party, of course.

[Spawn of Stalin]

It is true that left communist oppose national liberation movements, among with all other nationalist movements, all other bourgeois movements and so forth. It is not true that left communists oppose the idea of a vanguard, left communists are for the establishment of the vanguard part of the working class - we simply think that this party should not substitute itself for the class, attempt to take actions on behalf of the class, take state-power itself instead of the class and so forth. What we are for is vanguard part of the proletariat, not over it.
Comrade it depends on which point of view you look at it from, from a Marxist-Leninist standpoint the left Communists are indeed opposed to the actions of the vanguard of 1917, that was and still is the definitive vanguard party as described in What Is To Be Done? Marxist-Leninists believe that the vanguard was not above the working class, rather that it was of the working class. Of course a left Communist would disagree and say that left Communists support a vanguard, however left Communists support a vanguard which was nothing like Lenin's vanguard, they wish to form an entirely different vanguard, but since the vanguard proposed by the left Communists is undoubtedly always going to be a complete betrayal of Lenin's idea for a vanguard, it is a vanguard only in name. I personally believe, and I think most intelligent Marxist-Leninists would agree with me, that left Communists are against the vanguard theory altogether.

Like I said, it is worth looking at things from every possible points of view, I myself am (unashamedly) guilty of presenting facts from a Marxist-Leninist point of view, but when it comes to theory the line between fact and opinion becomes extremely blurry, one can only truly decide what is true for themselves through research and study.

[Leo]

Comrade it depends on which point of view you look at it from, from a Marxist-Leninist standpoint the left Communists are indeed opposed to the actions of the vanguard of 1917, that was and still is the definitive vanguard party as described in What Is To Be Done? Marxist-Leninists believe that the vanguard was not above the working class, rather that it was of the working class. Of course a left Communist would disagree and say that left Communists support a vanguard, however left Communists support a vanguard which was nothing like Lenin's vanguard, they wish to form an entirely different vanguard, but since the vanguard proposed by the left Communists is undoubtedly always going to be a complete betrayal of Lenin's idea for a vanguard, it is a vanguard only in name. I personally believe, and I think most intelligent Marxist-Leninists would agree with me, that left Communists are against the vanguard theory altogether.It is simply a fact that the standpoint of the left communists was not opposed at all to the actions of the proletarian vanguard in Russia 1917 - neither then nor now. The Bolshevik Party was for the workers' councils (the soviets) taking power, they were for the workers destroying the state, their slogan was "all power to the soviets" not "all power to the party", they were among the strongest defenders of internationalism and turning the imperialist war into civil war. They were for participating in the workers movement and arguing and discussing within it. These are things we not only support but also adopt, and so is the concept of a narrow, minority vanguard party as opposed to a mass party - this while not refraining from criticizing Lenin's mistakes in What is to be done?, especially those made under the influence of Kautsky who claimed that consciousness is brought to workers by petty-bourgeois intellectuals.

Although the understanding of the vanguard party by the communist left today is not a dogma coming out of the mouths of individual geniuses but a product of a dynamic discussion within what we see as the marxist movement, the aspects of our understanding of the vanguard which at the moment are being questioned could be summarized by the following quotes:


The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole

The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.



The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workers' Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government and that therefore our task is, as long as this government yields to the influence of the bourgeoisie, to present a patient, systematic and persistent explanation of the errors of their tactics, an explanation especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses.

As long as we are in a minority we carry on the work of criticising and exposing errors and at the same time we preach the necessity of transferring the entire state power to the Soviets of Workers' Deputies


[T]he congress of the Communist International declares that the chief task of the Communist Parties in countries where Soviet power is not established are:

1.To explain to the broad masses of the working class the historical meaning of the political and practical necessity of a new proletarian democracy which must replace bourgeois democracy and parliamentarianism.

2. To extend and build up workers' councils in all branches of industry, in the army and navy, and amongst agricultural workers and small peasants

3. To win an assured, conscious communist majority in the councils

[Luisrah]

So the left communists are somewhat more radical and orthodox in the sense that they want the workers themselves to do the revolution, instead of having a party that is supported by the workers to do the revolution and rule after it?

I find it annoying and exciting at the same time that I can look at all of them and say that each had good things and bad things too.
I find annoying because I can't say in my mind ''this was a good one'' ''this was a bad one''...

But some of my questions still remain, if Stalin gave such a bad name to communism and ''ruined'' the October Revolution, how are there so many stalinists in these forums? (they're not many, but I'd suppose it'd be even less)

And what are national liberations?

[Hit The North]

So the left communists are somewhat more radical and orthodox in the sense that they want the workers themselves to do the revolution, instead of having a party that is supported by the workers to do the revolution and rule after it?


Again, it is more complicated than that because all Marxists, including Leninists or Bolsheviks, argue that the revolution must be the act of the working class itself; and all Marxists believe that the working class must organise itself as a party in order to conquer political power. There may, however, be serious disagreements about the form this party should take.

Sometimes, it pays to distinguish between what people want, and what they end up doing. As Marx wrote, "Men make history but not under circumstances chosen by themselves." Our theory does not directly explain our actions - other events - material events, like civil war, famine or political isolation, can get in the way.


I find it annoying and exciting at the same time that I can look at all of them and say that each had good things and bad things too.This is the best attitude. No one is always correct and a person who makes no mistakes, is a person who does nothing at all.


But some of my questions still remain, if Stalin gave such a bad name to communism and ''ruined'' the October Revolution, how are there so many stalinists in these forums? (they're not many, but I'd suppose it'd be even less)Stalin supervised over a number of important and impressive events: an incredibly fast and effective (if brutal) industrial revolution; and winning the war against Nazi Germany. This gives him enormous prestige among those who confuse the Russian national interest with international socialism.


And what are national liberations? They are when the people of nations struggle for their independence from larger powers, such as India against the British Empire or Algeria against France. Today, the struggle of the Palestinian people to establish an independent homeland, free of Israel, is another.

[rebelmouse]

I have lately grown very confuse about ........
I think you are confused because of difference between theory and practice of mentioned communists. many people speak one thing but in reality they do other thing.
I hope you will believe in proletariat (exploited class) and not in party. but your choice.

[Luisrah]

They are when the people of nations struggle for their independence from larger powers, such as India against the British Empire or Algeria against France. Today, the struggle of the Palestinian people to establish an independent homeland, free of Israel, is another.

And left communists don't support that?
I mean, they don't support the fact that Palestine was already there and Israel stole some territory and is takeing more and more?


I hope you will believe in proletariat (exploited class) and not in party. but your choice.

What do you mean with believing in party instead of proletariat?

[Niccolò Rossi]

And left communists don't support that?

All the nationalist ideologies - ‘national independence’, ‘the right of nations to self-determination’ etc - whatever their pretext, ethnic, historical or religious, are a real poison for the workers. By calling on them to take the side of one or another faction of the bourgeoisie, they divide workers and lead them to massacre each other in tr in the interests and wars of their exploiters.(Basic Positions of the ICC (http://en.internationalism.org/basic-positions))
For a more thorough explanation of the position see the ICC's pamphlet Nation or Class (http://en.internationalism.org/pamphlets/nationorclass)


I mean, they don't support the fact that Palestine was already there and Israel stole some territory and is takeing more and more?

The fact that Palestine was 'already there' isn't the concern of communists. We support the international class struggle of workers' across all national divisions and fight for the destruction of all boarders and nation states.

[Devrim]

Comrade it depends on which point of view you look at it from, from a Marxist-Leninist standpoint the left Communists are indeed opposed to the actions of the vanguard of 1917,

I can't quite understand where this argument is coming from. Not only were the people who later became the left communists a part of that vanguard in 1917, but one could argue that the left winning over lenin to its positions was one of the key parts in building that vanguard.

People often fail to remember that as late as a year before the revolution Lenin was still writing things like this:


The social revolution cannot be the united action of the proletarians of all countries for the simple reason that most of the countries and the,majorities of the world's population have not even reached, or have only just reached, the capitalist stage of development... Only the advanced countries of Western Europe and North America have matured for socialism. The social revolution can come only in the form of an epoch in which are combined civil war by the proletariat in the advanced countries and a whole series of democratic and revolutionary movements... in the undeveloped, backward and oppressed nations.

Basically, this is something at the heart of what would later be charecterised as Menshevism, the idea that revolution was not possible in Russia at that period, due to the lack of development of the productive forces.

It was the actions of the class itself alongside the arguments of the left, which won Lenin, and the party, to the positions of the left wing and was an essential part of building that vanguard.

Devrim

[rebelmouse]

What do you mean with believing in party instead of proletariat?

it means that people who are the top of party misuse party for themselves and always they represent themselves like party of proletariat. they are not. they create privileges for themselves, they see themselves like revolution, they create cult of leader, they create secret agency which will kill workers who are not obedient, they are avanguard who is "given by the god to decide for other people" (at that point they remember me on the church and king from the middle age who propagated that king if ruler which is given by the god, it means no one can question his position).... and so on, I can continue, but you understood.
party means privileges for the people who are at the top of the party and the state and repressive departments secure them to keep privileges for themselves (it means that they will kill people after revolution, in the name of keeping of result of revolution, but the fact is, they just keep themselves at position and if they abolished the state during revolution, they would not need to kill anyone after revolution). party=state=evil=slavery (economic inequality is slavery).
give me one example where socialist state had economic TOTAL equality among all members of society. there is no such case, everywhere the state was misused to keep people under control, to keep one person at the top, and now when leader die, society will become capitalist one. so, obviously 50 years of creating of socialism by political party (and its repressive departments), didn't bring people to that point that they can organize themselves alone (without the state, to transfer socialist society to communism). the only solution is abolishing of parties and of the state, and beliefs in proletariat and not in party.
and for the end: yes, people can organize themselves and protect themselevs from attack/war, even without the state. example are people from montenegro who resisted to ottoman empire even they didn't have authority to organize them for war and they were small community and ottoman empire very big and strong. when there is attack, people organize themselves very fast and they can be functional like the state army even without state and hierarchy.

[Rjevan]

But some of my questions still remain, if Stalin gave such a bad name to communism and ''ruined'' the October Revolution, how are there so many stalinists in these forums? (they're not many, but I'd suppose it'd be even less)
First of, we don't call ourselves "Stalinists", this is a term used by our opponents, we are Marxist-Leninists. And of course we don't think Stalin "gave a bad name to communism and ruined the October Revolution" or that he was a psychopathic murderer, a "red fascist", "betrayed the revolution" and all the other amusing stuff which is thrown around, based on propaganda by the nazis, capitalists, McCarthy, poor Solzhenitsyn (who had worrying fascist leanings which became obvious during the invasion of the USSR by the Wehrmacht, his admiration of Franco's fascist Spain and his demands for a continued US involvement in the Vietnam War) and finally brave Khrushchev, who is said to have "purged" that much in the Ukranie and Moscow in the 30s and 40s that "even" Stalin was shocked and Mikhail "Hero of Communism" Gorbachev (nice excerpt of an interview (http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv6n1/gorbach.htm) with this great "communist"). These people gave Stalin and communism a bad name.

I guess you see what I mean. Secret documents of this time, opened archives, modern historians and different independent sources suggest that the western view of Stalin is massively biassed and dominated by the writings of people who hated Stalin passionately like e.g. Trotsky or who tried to cover their own deeds up by drawing the attention towards "Stalin's crimes" like Khrushchev.
Further we acknowledge the great achievements of the USSR under Stalin's leadership, achievements which massively improved the living standarts of the citizens of the USSR, the working conditions, the fascinating economic growth rates, the modernisation of a shockingly underdeveloped country (e.g. as the bolsheviks came to power about 70% of all Russians were illiterate) and the victory over Nazi Germany.

We also acknowledge Stalin's theoretical works but unless what many people think we don't cultivate a cult of personality, we don't worship Stalin or Lenin or anybody else and we don't claim that Stalin was unfaillible and that everything he did was totally awesome, we are aware and critical of his policies regarding homosexuality and abortion, for example.

If you are interested I would recommend reading these two links, which are pretty much basics for all Anti-Revisionists:
-Another view of Stalin (http://www.plp.org/books/Stalin/book.html) (Ludo Martens)
-Stalin and the Struggle for Democratic Reform (http://clogic.eserver.org/2005/furr.html) (Grover Furr)

[Luisrah]

Thanks to all posters in this thread. I have cleared many of my doubts.

I never imagined that the western world view of Stalin was THAT biased.
Well of course that I knew it was a lot (like him killing 50 million people lol) but I actually thought he was some kind of psycopath.

I guess that the seperation of communist schools contributed a lot to the end of the Revolution spirit.
Instead of having communists with slightly different ideas working together to the same goal, they seperated and gave each other a bad name ruining everything in the meanwhile.

[Leo]

First of, we don't call ourselves "Stalinists", this is a term used by our opponents, we are Marxist-Leninists. And of course we don't think Stalin "gave a bad name to communism and ruined the October Revolution" or that he was a psychopathic murderer, a "red fascist", "betrayed the revolution" and all the other amusing stuff which is thrown around, based on propaganda by the nazis, capitalists, McCarthy, poor Solzhenitsyn (who had worrying fascist leanings which became obvious during the invasion of the USSR by the Wehrmacht, his admiration of Franco's fascist Spain and his demands for a continued US involvement in the Vietnam War) and finally brave Khrushchev, who is said to have "purged" that much in the Ukranie and Moscow in the 30s and 40s that "even" Stalin was shocked and Mikhail "Hero of Communism" Gorbachev (nice excerpt of an interview (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv6n1/gorbach.htm) with this great "communist"). These people gave Stalin and communism a bad name.

Stalin's reputation first and foremost comes from the fact that he was the symbol of the butchery of entire generations of revolutionaries and workers, that of the destruction of the revolution and the Bolshevik Party as well. German, American and British imperialist powers all worked with Russian imperialism in Stalin's era.

I posted the following in another thread as an incomplete balance sheet of Stalin's crimes against the communist movement in Russia and internationally and a short summery of how other imperialist powers reacted to what was happening:


Here's a graphic demonstration of what happened to the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party of 1917:

http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/events/terror/cc-1917.jpg

Now, as it can be seen here, only three members of the Central Committee survived the Stalinist terror. Two of them, Kollontai and Stassova had retired from active politics completely before the purges (Kollontai had also recanted her political opinions while Stassove had retired from active politics in the early twenties when Lenin was alive). This leaves only one other person - Muranov, who was involved in politics as a Stalinist who survived. All the rest of the Bolshevik Part Central Committee that was alive at the time of the Stalinist purges were murdered by the regime. Out of six members of the original Politburo during the 1917 Revolution who lived until the Purges, only Stalin wasn't murdered. None from the first Council of People's Commissars formed in 1917 except Stalin who was alive at the time of his counter-revolutionary terror survived from it.

Other prominent Bolshevik leaders who weren't in the Central Committee at the time of the revolution and militant workers were also victims of the counter revolution, such as Karl Radek, Yuri Pyatakov, Alexander Shliapnikov, Yevgeny Preoprazhensky, David Riazanov, Christian Rakovsky, Ivan Smirnov, Varvara Yakovleva, Grigori Safarov, Gabriel Myasnikov, Timotei Sapranov, Vladimir Smirnov, Vyacheslav Zof, Georgy Oppokov, Mikhail Borodin, Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko, Lenin's one time personal secretary Nikolai Gorbunov, Sergei Medvedev, Vladimir Milyutin, Ivan Teodorovich, Nikolai Glebov-Avilov. There were many many others.

A very small amount of Old Bolsheviks survived the purges. The most significant one was Krupskaya who had said that had Lenin been alive, he'd be the first to be shot by Stalin's regime - she was being closely wathed of course. There were very few Old Bolsheviks who became Stalinists, and they were ones that did not have prominent roles during the revolution. The most well known Bolsheviks who became Stalinists were Kalinin and Voroshilov. The most prominent role played by Kalinin was the rather sinister role in the supression of Kronstadt, openly lying in order to get it suppressed before Lenin's death, as for Voroshilov he became a member of the Central Committee in 1921 and that was the most significant thing he had done. There were a few other old Bolsheviks who supported Stalin, such as Molotov, Kaganovich and Mikoyan - although none of them had any distinctive qualities or specific influence as opposed to the Bolshevik leaders murdered during the purges.

Communist leaders from Central Asia such as Sahipgirai Saidgaliev, Sherif Manatov, Sagidullin, Shamilgulov and Atnagulov, from Georgia such as Polikarp Mdivani, people like Afandiyev and Huseynov from Azerbaijan, people like Gayk Bzhishkyan, Vagarshak Ter-Vaganyan and Aghasi Khanchian from Amerina were not spared from the counter-revolutionary terror either.

Neither were communist leaders of workers' revolutions in different countries who resided in the USSR at the time, such as Bela Kun and Joseph Pogany of the Hungarian Revolution, Jaan Anvelt from the Estonian Revolution, Avetis Sultanzade from the Persian Soviet Socialist Republic, Salih Hacioglu who was one of the leaders of the communist struggle against the national liberation movement in Turkey among lots and lots of other communist revolutionaries from different parts of the world. Lots of communist leaders who played a significant role in the formation of Communist Parties in different parties were toppled and replaced with loyal Stalinists who in most cases had been rather insignificant in the parties before. Such events happened in places like Italy, Germany, France, England, Spain, Greece, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, the US, Canada, China, Turkey and Iran, among lots of other places.

In total, about 100,000 members of the Bolshevik Party were arrested, many of whom were tortured and murdered (http://www.answers.com/topic/the-great-purges (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.answers.com/topic/the-great-purges)). In 1922 there were only 44,148 Old Bolsheviks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Bolsheviks).

As for the attitude of the West, when, from 1936, Stalin organized the wretched ‘Moscow Trials', when the old comrades of Lenin, broken by torture, were accused of the most abject crimes and themselves ended up asking for exemplary punishment, this same democratic press in the pay of capital let it be known that ‘there was no smoke without fire' (even if some newspapers made some timid criticisms of Stalin's policies, affirming that they were ‘exaggerated'). It was with the complicity of the bourgeoisies of the great powers that Stalin accomplished his monstrous crimes, that he exterminated, in his prisons and concentration camps, hundreds of thousands of communists, more than ten million workers and peasants. And the bourgeois sectors that showed the greatest zeal in this complicity were the democratic sectors (and particularly Social-Democracy); the same sectors that today virulently denounce the crimes of Stalinism and present themselves as models of virtue. It's only because the regime that consolidated itself in Russia after the death of Lenin and the final crushing of the German revolution was a variant of capitalism, and even the spearhead of the counter-revolution, that it received such warm support from all the bourgeoisies that only a few years earlier had ferociously fought the power of the Soviets. In 1934, in fact, these same ‘democratic' bourgeoisies accepted the USSR into the League of Nations, an institution that Lenin had called a "den of thieves" at the time of its foundation. This was the sign that Stalin had become a ‘respectable Bolshevik' in the eyes of the ruling class of every country, the same rulers who had once presented the Bolsheviks of 1917 as barbarians with knives between their teeth. The imperialist brigands recognized Stalin as one of their own. The communists who opposed Stalin submitted to the persecutions of the entire world bourgeoisie.

[Alf]

Excellent post, Leo - it should be an article on our website, send it over to the guys who do it....

Devrim also made a very crucial point about the left wing of the Bolshevik party being in the vanguard when the revolution was maturing and when it broke out - Lenin himself moved to the left continually during this period. Later on of course, the left was in the vanguard of resistance against the Stalinist counter-revolution.

[Rjevan]

I'm not out for a tendency war, I lack both, the time and the mood for this but there are some things which I'd like to clarify.

...Stalin accomplished his monstrous crimes...
May I remind that Stalin was only a man, could have hardly had total and absolute control over every branch of the USSR system and personally ordered everything what happened. He was not some sort of supernatural being with absolute power, in this case the Supreme Soviet Court decided who was executed (and of course people with enough fantasy can come up with stories about Stalin telling the judges the sentences from the very beginning and then sitting amused behind a red curtain, smoking his pipe and watching "his victims" struggle for their very life but I'm afraid these are nothing but very crude conspiracy theories with absolutely no evidence).


...when the old comrades of Lenin, broken by torture, were accused of the most abject crimes
Of the most abject crimes? Besides, as far as I know there is also no evidence that they were tortured and nobody of them ever claimed that. From "Another view of Stalin":

During his trial, Bukharin made several confessions and, during confrontations with other accused, gave details about certain aspects of the conspiracy. Joseph Davies, U.S. ambassador to Moscow and well-known lawyer, attended every session of the trial. He was convinced, as were other competent foreign observers, that Bukharin had spoken freely and that his confessions were sincere. On March 17, 1938, Davies send a confidential message to the Secretary of State in Washington.

`Notwithstanding a prejudice arising from the confession evidence and a prejudice against a judicial system which affords practically no protection for the accused, after daily observation of the witnesses, their manner of testifying, the unconscious corroboration which developed, and other facts in the course of the trial, together with others of which a judicial notice could be taken, it is my opinion so far as the political defendants are concerned sufficient crimes under Soviet law, among those charged in the indictment, were established by the proof and beyond a reasonable doubt to justify the verdict of guilty by treason and the adjudication of the punishment provided by Soviet criminal statutes. The opinion of those diplomats who attended the trial most regularly was general that the case had established the fact that there was a formidable political opposition and an exceedingly serious plot.'
Joseph E. Davies, Mission to Moscow, (New York: Garden City Publishing Co., 1943), p. 163.
...
During the trial's dozens of hours, Bukharin was perfectly lucid and alert, discussing, contesting, sometimes humorous, vehemently denying certain accusations. For those who attended the trial, as for those of us who can read the trial proceedings, it is clear that the `show trial' theory, widely diffused by anti-Communists, is unrealistic.
Tokaev, p. 96.

But back to the "abject" accusations. You mean plans for a coup and sabotage?
Let's quote one of Ismail's posts here (emphasis by me):

Shortly before they left for Russia, Trotsky's emissaries, Konon Berman-Yurin and Fritz David, were summoned to special conferences with Trotsky himself. The meetings took place in Copenhagen toward the end of November 1932. Konon Berman-Yurin later stated:

'I had two meetings with him [Trotsky]. First of all he began to sound me on my work in the past. Then Trotsky passed to Soviet affairs. Trotsky said: 'The principal question is the question of Stalin. Stalin must be physically destroyed.' He said that other methods of struggle were now ineffective. He said that for this purpose people were needed who would dare anything, who would agree to sacrifice themselves for this, as he expressed it, historic task. . . .

In the evening we continued our conversation. I asked him how individual terrorism could be reconciled with Marxism. To this Trotsky replied: problems cannot be treated in a dogmatic way. He said that a situation had arisen in the Soviet Union which Marx could not have foreseen. Trotsky also said that in addition to Stalin it was necessary to assassinate Kaganovich and Voroshilov. . . .
(Kahn, A. E., and M. Sayers. The Great Conspiracy: The Secret War Against Soviet Russia. 1st ed. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1946., pp. 248-49.)

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1525070&postcount=26

Further it is know that Lenin already disagreed with Zinoviev and Kamenev in 1917, accused them of being opportunists and betraying the revolution and wanted to throw them out of the party.
Bukharin and Rykov on the other hand were known as rightists and had social-democrat leanings and also worrying signs of opportunism.
"Another view of Stalin":

During his trial, Bukharin admitted in front of the tribunal that in 1918, after the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, that there was a plan to arrest Lenin, Stalin and Sverdlov, and to form a new government composed of `left-communists' and Social Revolutionaries.
Court Proceedings ... ``Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites'', op. cit. , pp. 377--378.
So much for Lenin's old "comrades"...


So Bukharin was ready to arrest Lenin at the time of the Brest-Litovsk crisis in 1918. Eighteen years later, in 1936, Bukharin was a completely demoralized man. With the world war just over the horizon, tension was extreme. Coup d'état attempts against the Party leadership were more and more probable. Bukharin, with his prestige of `Old Bolshevik'; Bukharin, the only `rival' of the same stature as Stalin; Bukharin, who detested the `extreme hardness' of Stalin's régime; who was afraid that the `Stalinists' would form a `new aristocracy'; who thought that only `democracy' could save the Soviet Union; how would he not have accepted to cover with his authority a possible `democratic' anti-Stalinist coup d'état? How could the man who was ready to arrest Lenin in 1918 not be ready, at a much more tense and dramatic time, to cover up the arrests of Stalin, Zhdanov, Molotov and Kaganovich?

So whatever you think of overthrowing Stalin, it is clear that they wanted to do this and that's what they were accused for.

Then let's go on with sabotage.
"Another view of Stalin":
-Sabotage in the Urals (http://www.plp.org/books/Stalin/node101.html#SECTION001032010000000000000)
-Sabotage in Kazhakstan (http://www.plp.org/books/Stalin/node102.html#SECTION001032020000000000000)
-Sabotage in Magnitogorsk (http://www.plp.org/books/Stalin/node104.html#SECTION001032040000000000000)

It's about the American (!) engineers John Litterpage and John Scott, becoming witnesses of sabotage.
Btw, if anybody dislikes that I quote that much from a "pro-Stalinist" book: just because it doesn't condemn Stalin and present him as vicious monster doesn't mean that it is automatically entirely wrong and that the sources it contains are made up.


Other prominent Bolshevik leaders...
Being a Bolshevik leader, an "old Bolshevik" or the leader of a CP doesn't mean that you're automatically a saint and above all suspicions. If there are evidence that some of those people planned a coup (like some did already in 1917 as we saw) you can't just ignore this because they are part of "the old guard". This is no blank cheque and doesn't make you untouchable.


This was the sign that Stalin had become a ‘respectable Bolshevik' in the eyes of the ruling class of every country
Er, excuse me?
http://img.wonkette.com/images/thumbs/1ccf5c192de97a1b3aca407324ef3fbd.jpghttp://www.learner.org/amerpass/unit16/images/author09-6241.jpghttp://www.pulitzer.org/files/highlights/1954.jpg

And much more...
Seriously, the ruling classes, respecting Stalin? When should that have happened? I remember history lessons about Chruchill quotes which were about "slaughtering the wrong pig" (regarding to Hitler) and massive hostility from the West towards the USSR.


Stalin's reputation first and foremost comes from the fact that he was the symbol of the butchery of entire generations of revolutionaries and workers
Yes, to be exactly he was made a symbol for butchery by anti-communists including fascists, nazis and capitalists...

that of the destruction of the revolution and the Bolshevik Party as well.
... and he was accused of this by people who betrayed the revolution from the very beginning and were out for the destruction of the Bolshevik party and/or were simply embittered because they didn't get to power.

[Leo]

I'm not out for a tendency warJust to clarify, I am even not interested at all in what you see as your tendency - what I am trying to do is to refute the lies about the counter-revolutionary murder of the majority of the militants of the Bolshevik Party.


May I remind that Stalin was only a man, could have hardly had total and absolute control over every branch of the USSR system and personally ordered everything what happened. He was not some sort of supernatural being with absolute power, in this case the Supreme Soviet Court decided who was executed (and of course people with enough fantasy can come up with stories about Stalin telling the judges the sentences from the very beginning and then sitting amused behind a red curtain, smoking his pipe and watching "his victims" struggle for their very life but I'm afraid these are nothing but very crude conspiracy theories with absolutely no evidence).Certainly Stalin was only a man, and our issue is not with Stalin the man, but it is with the bourgeois class in Russia which he was the chief representative of. It was the counter-revolutionary state of this class which murdered the most dedicated and sincere revolutionaries who dedicated their lives to the cause of the world revolution.


Besides, as far as I know there is also no evidence that they were tortured Of course they were, and it is documented by numerous sources.


During his trial, Bukharin made several confessions and, during confrontations with other accused, gave details about certain aspects of the conspiracy. Joseph Davies, U.S. ambassador to Moscow and well-known lawyer, attended every session of the trial. He was convinced, as were other competent foreign observers, that Bukharin had spoken freely and that his confessions were sincere. On March 17, 1938, Davies send a confidential message to the Secretary of State in Washington.

`Notwithstanding a prejudice arising from the confession evidence and a prejudice against a judicial system which affords practically no protection for the accused, after daily observation of the witnesses, their manner of testifying, the unconscious corroboration which developed, and other facts in the course of the trial, together with others of which a judicial notice could be taken, it is my opinion so far as the political defendants are concerned sufficient crimes under Soviet law, among those charged in the indictment, were established by the proof and beyond a reasonable doubt to justify the verdict of guilty by treason and the adjudication of the punishment provided by Soviet criminal statutes. The opinion of those diplomats who attended the trial most regularly was general that the case had established the fact that there was a formidable political opposition and an exceedingly serious plot.'
Joseph E. Davies, Mission to Moscow, (New York: Garden City Publishing Co., 1943), p. 163. So how exactly or why on earth do you expect the words of a representative of American imperialism at the time to absolve the murder of revolutionaries at the hand of the Russian bourgeois state? This, if anything, proves the point that world capitalism at the time was behind the Stalinist counter-revolution in Russia. I already mentioned that the bourgeois press in such countries were denying that such things were happening in Russia, claiming that "there was no smoke without fire", describing the reports of the revolutionaries on the situation as "exaggerated" at best. I am sure the Nazi leadership also enjoyed the cleansing of such a large number of "Jewish-Bolsheviks".


Shortly before they left for Russia, Trotsky's emissaries, Konon Berman-Yurin and Fritz David, were summoned to special conferences with Trotsky himself. The meetings took place in Copenhagen toward the end of November 1932. Konon Berman-Yurin later stated:

'I had two meetings with him [Trotsky]. First of all he began to sound me on my work in the past. Then Trotsky passed to Soviet affairs. Trotsky said: 'The principal question is the question of Stalin. Stalin must be physically destroyed.' He said that other methods of struggle were now ineffective. He said that for this purpose people were needed who would dare anything, who would agree to sacrifice themselves for this, as he expressed it, historic task. . . .

In the evening we continued our conversation. I asked him how individual terrorism could be reconciled with Marxism. To this Trotsky replied: problems cannot be treated in a dogmatic way. He said that a situation had arisen in the Soviet Union which Marx could not have foreseen. Trotsky also said that in addition to Stalin it was necessary to assassinate Kaganovich and Voroshilov. . . .:rolleyes: This quote which was "later stated" was in fact lated stated at the show-trials, under extremely heavy conditions of threats and psychological and physical torture.

There was no attempts at assassination ever by the communist opposition in Russia against the representatives of the new counter-revolutionary state, not because they were not enemies of that state but because they were marxists and they never saw any point assassinations and similar events.


Further it is know that Lenin already disagreed with Zinoviev and Kamenev in 1917, accused them of being opportunists and betraying the revolution and wanted to throw them out of the party.Yes, and the third member of the Zinoviev-Kamanev group which opposed Lenin's call for the overthrow of the provisional government and wanted to continue the war was none other than Stalin himself.

Yet because, in what actually was Bolshevism the Stalinist policy of terror did not exist, Zinoviev and Kamanev not only stayed in the party but one of them became the chairman of the Communist International. This is not to say that Zinoviev and Kamanev were not opportunists, but they were not counter-revolutionaries like their hangmen.


Bukharin and Rykov on the other hand were known as rightists and had social-democrat leanings and also worrying signs of opportunism.Bukharin and Rykov were less rightists than Stalin on the political manner and proved out to be as such on the economical manner also. It is mistaken to call the program of ultra-industrialization to the left anyway - it turned out that it was way more to the right of the other option. Some of Bukharin's points in regards to Preobrazhinsky's plan of ultra-industrialization (which Stalin, in a way more brutal manner of course, applied) are quite accurate and interesting. They too of course fell to opportunism at times, but at the end of the day were not counter-revolutionaries, where their murderers were.


During his trial, Bukharin admitted in front of the tribunal that in 1918, after the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, that there was a plan to arrest Lenin, Stalin and Sverdlov, and to form a new government composed of `left-communists' and Social Revolutionaries.The left-communists at the time dismissed even the talk of the possibility of such plans with the Social Revolutionaries.

Funny how people start saying things at their trials which had occured to no one before - could it be because of torture?


So whatever you think of overthrowing Stalin, it is clear that they wanted to do this and that's what they were accused for.Actually, at the time, Bukharin and those who were arrested with him were completely broken and were involved with no opposition activity at all. They were being murdered for their role in the revolutionary period and previous oppositions. It is clear that the statements were taken under torture.


Btw, if anybody dislikes that I quote that much from a "pro-Stalinist" book: just because it doesn't condemn Stalin and present him as vicious monster doesn't mean that it is automatically entirely wrong and that the sources it contains are made up.I laugh at it rather than disliking it, talks of "they admitted being part of the conspiracacy"... It's like reading the conspiracy nutjobs going on about the protocols of zion and all.

On a different note, quoting accusations and their admissions taken as torture as facts is not quite convincing.


Being a Bolshevik leader, an "old Bolshevik" or the leader of a CP doesn't mean that you're automatically a saint and above all suspicions.No, certainly not - a small minority of those fellas were careerists and did side with the Stalinist counter-revolution after all.

The point I am making was however that an overwhelming majority of the old Bolsheviks as well revolutionaries who had prominent roles during the Russian revolution were murdered by the Stalinists. In other words, if the CPSU of the 30s were revolutionary, the Bolshevik Party of 1917 had to be counter-revolutionary, because those were the people getting butchered.


... and he was accused of this by people who betrayed the revolution from the very beginning and were out for the destruction of the Bolshevik party and/or were simply embittered because they didn't get to power.

Sure, the majority of the Bolshevik Party betrayed the revolution from the very beginning, they were for the destruction of the Bolshevik Party. In fact the October Revolution should be called the October Counter-revolution - and Stalin of course brought the true revolution by butchering this vile party which was trying to destroy itself by very cunningly getting to the top of this party.


Seriously, the ruling classes, respecting Stalin? When should that have happened? I remember history lessons about Chruchill quotes which were about "slaughtering the wrong pig" (regarding to Hitler) and massive hostility from the West towards the USSR.Funnily enough the propoganda of different imperialist powers tend to depend on their current rivalries or alliences. I can post as many propaganda pictures as you can, and they will be ones issued by imperialist states rather than right-wing press agencies merely aligned with them.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/40/110654827_2e5966beaf.jpg

http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/time/1036-1.jpg

Here's a link to an article by the same magazine: http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv6n2/StalinTM.htm A few months after he was picked as the man of the year, Life magazine described the NKDV as a “a national police similar to the FBI.” Pretty accurate in my opinion.

The same Churchill you quote says this about your hero: "It is very fortunate for Russia in her agony to have this great rugged war chief at her head. He is a man of massive outstanding personality, suited to the sombre and stormy times in which his life has been cast; a man of inexhaustible courage and will-power and a man direct and even blunt in speech, which, having been brought up in the House of Commons, I do not mind at all, especially when I have something to say of my own. Above all, he is a man with that saving sense of humour which is of high importance to all men and all nations, but particularly to great men and great nations. Stalin also left upon me the impression of a deep, cool wisdom and a complete absence of illusions of any kind. I believe I made him feel that we were good and faithful comrades in this war-but that, after all, is a matter which deeds not words will prove." [Speech in the House of Commons (08.09.1942)]

Here is what Hitler said about him, before their friendship pact was broken: "Stalin is one of the most extraordinary figures in world history. He began as a small clerk, and he has never stopped being a clerk. Stalin owes nothing to rhetoric. He governs from his office, thanks to a bureaucracy that obeys his every nod and gesture. It's striking that Russian propaganda, in the criticisms it makes of us, always holds itself within certain limits." ["Night of 18-19 July 1941" Die Bormann Vermerke: Transcripts of Hitler's conversations (5 July 1941 - 30 November 1944), made under the supervision of Martin Bormann, published in the UK as Hitler's Table Talks (1953)]


Yes, to be exactly he was made a symbol for butchery by anti-communists including fascists, nazis and capitalists...He is that symbol because the state which he was the chief of butchered entire generations of revolutionaries and worker, in a way which would make every single anti-communist on earth envy Stalin. This is why the world bourgeoisie at the time of the purges of the communist revolutionary militants was behind Stalin.

Lenin in State and Revolution says: "During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it."

Sometimes, the ruling class does the opposite to their own kind; this was the case with Stalin.

[black magick hustla]

The class nature of stalinist russia makes itself manifest when it murdered more revolutionaries than any other state - even nazi germany.

[Revy]

Stalinism was a violent bureaucracy, so it took on a character beyond the man. Stalin fell victim to his own system, as it is probable that Beria poisoned him, Beria, of course, who was the head of the NKVD during the Great Purges, a rapist and no doubt an expert in mass murder and political killings. Beria had also been the Secretary of the Communist Party in Georgia. Beria had turned on his master, Stalin, after he fell out of favor for being Mingrelian (the Mingrelians were suddenly under suspicion, this was around the same time of the peak of Soviet anti-Semitic purges)

How close were Stalin and Beria? They were as thick as thieves (literally).
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Lavrenti_Beria_Stalins_family.jpg
Beria with Stalin's daughter.

[Luisrah]

So Lenin approved the existence of a Vanguard, but Trotsky wanted the workers to organize themselves.

When Lenin died, Stalin pushed Trotsky away and started killing his comrades.

Is that a simple way of saying it?

[Rjevan]

So Lenin approved the existence of a Vanguard, but Trotsky wanted the workers to organize themselves.

When Lenin died, Stalin pushed Trotsky away and started killing his comrades.

Is that a simple way of saying it?
Seems like some people think so... :rolleyes:
There's just to add that Trotsky wanted to wait for the world revolution, in his view it was absolutely wrong to establish "socialism in one country" like Lenin and Stalin wanted, he argued for waiting for the world proletariat standing up and starting the world revolution because in his opinion Russia could not survive as only socialist nation surrounded by hostile imperialist nations and is dependent on the world revolution. So in his view the USSR should not have existed under the given situation.

I always have a great time imaginig myself him or people thinking the same way speaking to the Russian proletariat like: "This is all entirely wrong and we are sorry very much and at least just as dissappointed as everybody else here but this all is really totally senseless and it would be the best now to stop everything, go home and wait for the world revolution and in the meantime... well, the Czar wasn't that bad actually...". That would have been true revolutionary spirit, not like those counter-revolutionaries and reactionaries who didn't want the revolution to be in vain and dared to start building "socialism in one country"!
God, how I'd love to see this! :lol:

After Lenin's death Stalin was rightfully elected by the Central Comitee and he was appointed General Secretary even before, when Lenin was still alive. Trotsky was expelled from the party due to "continued counter-revolutionary activities" (the quotation marks are there because this is a quote, personally I find Trotsky's positions on the USSR quite counter-revolutionary) and after several reports of sabotage and spies in the party and finally the murder of Leningrad's party leader, Sergey Kirov, who was also very close to Stalin, in 1937 by a former member of the Bolshevik party, the interrogation of this man revealed further cases of sabotage and traitors within the party. This started the "Great Purge" or simply the Moscow Trials.

But yes, in short you could also argue Stalin killed Lenin, then exiled and later killed Trotsky, then killed all old and true revolutionaries, then killed the peasants and (knowingly, of course!) caused a famine in the Ukraine, killed further, purged the army, killed on a little bit and just as he prepared for a new season of killing he was interrupted by mean Hitler. Ah, I like fantasy novels. ;)

[Luisrah]

Hmm, I have no doubt that what Stalin did was greatly biased and augmented by non-supporters and the capitalist countries, but rumors that people believe usually have atleast a bit of truth.

It is fact that Stalin educated his country, boosted industry (or whatever or whatever more he did) but the end doesn't justify the means.
Churchill was relieved that the Nazis were hitting hard on the russians, and the United States only set foot on Europe after the battle of Stalingrad (right?) despite numerous requests for them to create another war front.
In the end the USA got 900 thousand deaths, which is a lot, but the Russians came out with 22 million.
And if Churchill, Roosevelt were happy that the Nazis were hitting on the Russians, than Stalin was ''bad'', which means maybe he had something good in him (for us)
And it is also fact that if you ask a German what he thinks of Hitler, he'll say that he was a butcher, but if you ask a russian, atleast most of them will say that ''hey, he did lots of bad stuff, but he wasn't a hitler''

Before he died, Lenin did not wish for Stalin to be his succesor, as he was cold and was very... how do I say this, radical? I mean, he wasn't afraid of doing things that could do a lot of impact and would do them in a blink of an eye.

However, had Trotsky gained the support and won... I don't know, assuming he had lots of support, atleast I suppose there would be no deaths (yes I know that lots of workers in the gulags were prisoners from the civil war they were having) but I'm afraid that Trotsky wouldn't be so harsh in the war. And instead of fighting, Stalin could have tried some agreement (I'm not sure he did or not)

If Trotsky won, maybe he could have promoted the propagation of the revolution across the world. Maybe it would become stronger and trying to grow with propaganda everywhere.
Or as you said, it would fade away waiting for a miracle to happen and the workers to organise themselves with no one to help them and atleast lead the way.


PS: Keep in mind that my post may be full of crap. You have read my thread, you have been warned.

[Rjevan]

Of course they were [tortured], and it is documented by numerous sources.
Is it? The only source I remember was an (I think) American journalist, stating that "some of the defendants looked physically weak and were obviously not in the best mental condition, either." I have never seen any documents which proved evidence that they were tortured (besides of the usual lame "I have absolutely no evidence, this may seem like a wild guess of an anti-communist but THEY WERE TORTURED! I SWEAR!!! Btw, Stalin eats babies!!!"-arguments...) and nobody showed unquestionable signs of torture. That you don't jump into court, make jokes and sing a merry song should be somewhat self-evident but is no sign of being tortured.


So how exactly or why on earth do you expect the words of a representative of American imperialism at the time to absolve the murder of revolutionaries at the hand of the Russian bourgeois state? This, if anything, proves the point that world capitalism at the time was behind the Stalinist counter-revolution in Russia. I already mentioned that the bourgeois press in such countries were denying that such things were happening in Russia, claiming that "there was no smoke without fire", describing the reports of the revolutionaries on the situation as "exaggerated" at best. I am sure the Nazi leadership also enjoyed the cleansing of such a large number of "Jewish-Bolsheviks".
Sorry, but as far as I know the Moscow Trials were not at all welcomed or seen positively by the west, far from it! I never saw any sources were an American, British, French and/or German magazine wrote positively about this, welcoming the purges and praising Stalin for starting them. And they were definitely not denying, there were various journalists from all over the world who watched the trials and wrote about them and didn't tell the public about Bukharin falling down the stairs, Zinoviev being hit by a train and Rykov simply vanishing or something like that.


There was no attempts at assassination ever by the communist opposition in Russia against the representatives of the new counter-revolutionary state, not because they were not enemies of that state but because they were marxists and they never saw any point assassinations and similar events.

How do you know? Nobody will run around and talk openly about his love for assassinations and his newest plan to bomb Molotov away...
Besides, what about Kirov? I assume you count him to the "representatives of the new counter-revolutionary state". But I guess I know already what you will answer, the common answer to this: of course he was murdered by Stalin in order to have a good reason to start the purges... so much for "Stalinist paranoia"...


Actually, at the time, Bukharin and those who were arrested with him were completely broken and were involved with no opposition activity at all. They were being murdered for their role in the revolutionary period and previous oppositions. It is clear that the statements were taken under torture.

Why is that clear? Come on, this is just as if I would simply state: "It is clear that they were nazi spies."...


It's like reading the conspiracy nutjobs going on about the protocols of zion and all.

Huh, just what I feel when reading about Stalin, secretly destroying the revolution and killing all true revolutionaries and causing the famine because of his greed for absolute power and world domination and because he's an Okhrana spy with the the mission to destroy the communist movement.


Sure, the majority of the Bolshevik Party betrayed the revolution from the very beginning, they were for the destruction of the Bolshevik Party. In fact the October Revolution should be called the October Counter-revolution - and Stalin of course brought the true revolution by butchering this vile party which was trying to destroy itself by very cunningly getting to the top of this party.

Luckily the October Revolution was accomplished not by the party but by the Russian proletariat, if the first would have been the case I guess Lenin would still stand in the Smolny Institute, desperately trying to convince the brave and firm "revolutionaries" that they have to act instead of having another basic debate about when it's time to start a revolution (seems pretty counter-revolutionary to me to ask the workers to wait and to urge the Bolsheviks to enter a government with all "socialist" parties, including the Mensheviks but I guess that's just my wild fantasy), while German troops already marched through Petrograd...


Funnily enough the propoganda of different imperialist powers tend to depend on their current rivalries or alliences. I can post as many propaganda pictures as you can, and they will be ones issued by imperialist states rather than right-wing press agencies merely aligned with them.

That's it! These pics you posted are from the war (besides, the first shows a Red Army soldier, not Stalin, saying: "This man is our beloved ally. He's simply awesome!") where there was a certain necessity to present the USSR as trustworthy ally and fighters for freedom and of course you can't write articles about the man, leading this nation and who's army bet the Wehrmacht in Stalingrad and now is the most important factor for the allies winning this war, presenting him as "evil commie" who slays his people and commits the most horrible crimes against democracy and personal freedom. If Hitler were allied with the UK and the USA they wouldn't have published horror stories about him and possibly appoint him for "man of the year".

Again, show me one article or one quote from a mainstream magazine or a statesman, praising Stalin and the USSR before or after WWII! You won't find one. Instead I could post some praising Hitler as the saviour of Germany. The USA and the UK were especially negative towards the USSR before the war, and some even thanked Hitler for ensuring that the communists don't got to power in Germany and suggested an alliance with him and the Reich to stop the "Bolshevik threat".


what I am trying to do is to refute the lies about the counter-revolutionary murder of the majority of the militants of the Bolshevik Party.

Yes, and I'm trying to refute the lies about Stalin and the absurd theories about his leadership which were brought up by anti-communists.

See, you think Stalin and the USSR were reactionary and counter-revolutionary and that everybody who was killed were all good communists and that they were killed for no other reson than Stalin's hunger for power and his reactionary plans.
I think that those people accused in the Moscow trial were traitors, reactionaries and counter-revolutionaries, that they undermined the USSR and that with them still active during WWII the USSR would have definitely collapsed and Hitler would have won. And all those absurd theories were set up by people who had a high interest in making the USSR and Stalin look as bad as possible.

We can't convince each other, you won't accept my arguments and I won't accept yours for we both think we are absolutely right and this could be continued for another two pages, I guess. And that's what I meant with starting a tendency war, it's the old Anarchist/Left Communist/Trotskyist against Marxist-Leninist, trying to counter his theories/positions/arguments (and of course also the other way around) situation which we had uncountable times before and which changes absolutely nothing most of the time...

[Rjevan]

Churchill was relieved that the Nazis were hitting hard on the russians, and the United States only set foot on Europe after the battle of Stalingrad (right?) despite numerous requests for them to create another war front.
In the end the USA got 900 thousand deaths, which is a lot, but the Russians came out with 22 million.
Absolutely right. The allies had no interest opening a second front despite Stalin's pleas for this because the Red Army had to deal with nearly the whole Wehrmacht on its own. After it got clear that Hitler would lose the war (and that was clear after Stalingrad, even Hitler and his generals recognised) suddenly the allies sent more support to the USSR and as Red Army troops were approaching East Germany of course the allies had to jum in and save the world from the nazi threat (after the Russians lost millions of soldiers for exactly doing that) and the communist threat at once (i.e. prevent that the USSR grows too strong and dominates Europe).


And if Churchill, Roosevelt were happy that the Nazis were hitting on the Russians, than Stalin was ''bad'', which means maybe he had something good in him (for us)
Heh, nice logic, this was exactly what I thought once: "How comes that the Western world is so much out for presenting somebody as demon and sheer incranation of evil who fought against Hitler and helped to prevent a nazi world?" And then all the stuff about the USSR being "the Empire of Evil"...
But of course that doesn't mean that anybody who is presented bad by our society is automatically good, otherwise we would have to love Hitler. ;)

But hell, there are more than enough evidence for what Hitler did and the nazis made their own evidence, while so much is vague about "Stalin's crimes", so many clearly negative persons like wannabe-fascist Solzhenitsyn and suspect persons like Khrushchev condemend him and so many accusation have proven wrong or forged. Now they even admit openly in history magazines that the old estimates of Stalin's victimes were "highly exaggerated" and claim that he "just" murdered 25 millions of poeple instead sometimes 70 millions... and I also doubt that this is correct...


Before he died, Lenin did not wish for Stalin to be his succesor, as he was cold and was very... how do I say this, radical? I mean, he wasn't afraid of doing things that could do a lot of impact and would do them in a blink of an eye.
True, but he also regarded Trotsky as "unqualified" to lead the party.


However, had Trotsky gained the support and won... I don't know, assuming he had lots of support, atleast I suppose there would be no deaths (yes I know that lots of workers in the gulags were prisoners from the civil war they were having) but I'm afraid that Trotsky wouldn't be so harsh in the war. And instead of fighting, Stalin could have tried some agreement (I'm not sure he did or not)
Besides, I'm pretty sure that Trotsky wouldn't have won WWII if he lead the USSR and I also doubt that it would have "survived" the first years of its existence but these are all speculations, as one comrade here said once, maybe we would argue today about what "Uncle Leon" mad wrong and what monster he was while Stalin would have been forced to exile and murdered if trotsky came to power.


PS: Keep in mind that my post may be full of crap. You have read my thread, you have been warned.
Don't worry, this is Learning, ask whatever you want and if these above are your personal reflections and thoughts they are definitely no "crap", they are your personal opinion and it's better to have a personal opinion than just repeating what somebody else said. ;)

[Leo]

There's just to add that Trotsky wanted to wait for the world revolution, in his view it was absolutely wrong to establish "socialism in one country" like Lenin and Stalin wanted

This is a lie. Lenin never "wanted" "socialism" in one country, he didn't even see it as a possibility:

The Russian revolution is only one detachment of the world socialist army, and the success and triumph of the revolution that we have accomplished depends on the action of this army. This is a fact that no one amongst us forgets (...). The Russian proletariat is conscious of its revolutionary isolation, and it clearly sees that its victory has the indispensable condition and fundamental premise of the united intervention of the entire world proletariat". (Lenin, Report to the Factory Committees of the Province of Moscow, 28 July, 1918).

Almost all old Bolsheviks knew that if the revolution did not spread, they would be murdered by the counter-revolutionaries. That did turn out to be the case.


Is it? The only source I remember was an (I think) American journalist, stating that "some of the defendants looked physically weak and were obviously not in the best mental condition, either." You should read more, then.

It is now known that the confessions were given only after great psychological pressure and torture had been applied to the defendants. From the accounts of former GPU officer Alexander Orlov and others the methods used to extract the confessions are known: repeated beatings, torture, making prisoners stand or go without sleep for days on end, and threats to arrest and execute the prisoners' families. For example, Kamenev's teenage son was arrested and charged with terrorism. After months of such interrogation, the defendants were driven to despair and exhaustion. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Trials source: Orlov, Alexander, The Secret History of Stalin's Crimes, Random House, 1953)

Anastas Mikoyan and Molotov later claimed that Bukharin was never tortured, but it is now known that his interrogators were given order, "beating permitted," and were under great pressure to extract confessions out of the "star" defendant. Bukharin held out for three months, but threats to his young wife and infant son, combined with "methods of physical influence" wore him down. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Trials Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment" Pages 364-5)

Even Khrushchev, who was the part of the same regime, admits that the statements were taken under torture, in his secret speech. There of course also are numerous reports coming from prisoners.

Of course states rarely admit that they conduct torture. In Turkey, for example, after the coup in 1980, all bourgeois officials, press, policemen and the military were openly denying any use of torture in a cynicism similar to yours in regards to the actions of the Stalinist regime. Like it did with the Russian trials, however, little by little it came out, with the accounts from prisoners as well as from numerous researchers. The same thing also happened in Russia in the 30s, but with a critical difference: the representatives of the Russian state itself admitted that they conducted acts of torture, where the Turkish state still has not admitted anything as such.


Sorry, but as far as I know the Moscow Trials were not at all welcomed or seen positively by the west, far from it! I never saw any sources were an American, British, French and/or German magazine wrote positively about this, welcoming the purges and praising Stalin for starting them. And they were definitely not denying, there were various journalists from all over the world who watched the trials and wrote about them and didn't tell the public about Bukharin falling down the stairs, Zinoviev being hit by a train and Rykov simply vanishing or something like that.This is simply false. The representatives of the world bourgeoisie who watched the trials were saying that they were fair (you yourself proudly quoted them, don't you remember?). They were saying things like ‘there was no smoke without fire' (even if some newspapers made some timid criticisms of Stalin's policies, affirming that they were ‘exaggerated').


How do you know? Nobody will run around and talk openly about his love for assassinations and his newest plan to bomb Molotov away...The communist opposition in Russia did not ever do assassinations, they hadn't done it under the reign of Tsar Nicholas, they weren't gonna start under the reign of Tsar Koba.


Besides, what about Kirov? I assume you count him to the "representatives of the new counter-revolutionary state". But I guess I know already what you will answer, the common answer to this: of course he was murdered by Stalin in order to have a good reason to start the purges... so much for "Stalinist paranoia"...It is actually documented that Kirov's murder was organized by the NKDV. According to Alexander Orlov, who himself was a NKDV agent at the time, Yagoda gave the task to Vania Zaporozhets who was the deputy of the chief of the Leningrad NKDV (the chief himself was a close friend of Kirov), who recruited and armed Leonid Nikolayev. Nikolaev failed on his first attempt, was caught in Smolny institute with his gun. (Orlov, Alexander, The Secret History of Stalin's Crimes, New York: Random House 1953) Another Soviet officier of the time, Alexander Barmine notes that though Nikolaev had clearly broken Soviet laws, the security police had inexplicably released him from custody; he was even permitted to retain his loaded pistol.(Barmine, Alexander, One Who Survived, New York: G.P. Putnam 1945, p. 252) With Stalin's approval, the NKVD had previously withdrawn all but four police bodyguards assigned to Kirov. These four guards accompanied Kirov each day to his offices at the Smolny Institute, and then left. On December 1, 1934, the usual guard post at the entrance to Kirov's offices was left unmanned, even though the building served as the chief offices of the Leningrad party apparatus and seat of the local government. (Barmine, Alexander, One Who Survived, New York: G.P. Putnam (1945), pp. 247-252) According to some reports, only a single friend and unarmed bodyguard of Kirov's, Commissar Borisov, remained. (Knight, Amy, Who Killed Kirov? The Kremlin’s Greatest Mystery, New York: Hill and Wang 1999). Alexander Barmine also notes that "the negligence of the NKVD in protecting such a high party official was without precedent in the Soviet Union." (One Who Survived, p.252)

There was motive also: Kirov was a moderate opponent of Stalin and had been opposing several harsh measures which Stalin wanted to take, such as his succesful opposition to Stalin's demand for executing Martemyan Ryutin for writing a document very critical of Stalin's regime. He had a growing influence as well. And the way his death was manipulated to justify the murder of thousands of revolutionaries is well known after all.


Why is that clear? Because people don't make statements which they know would result in their execution unless they are under heavy torture.


Huh, just what I feel when reading about Stalin, secretly destroying the revolution and killing all true revolutionaries and causing the famine because of his greed for absolute power and world domination and because he's an Okhrana spy with the the mission to destroy the communist movement.Actually a prominent Bolshevik and the future leader of the Baku Commune, Stepan Shahumyan directly accused Stalin with being an Okhrana agent, and his view was shared by some other Bolsheviks as well and the relation between Stalin and the Okhrana is a bit suspicious but there is no clear evidence proving that.

On the other hand, the murder record of the Stalinist regime is quite obvious. Funny how you haven't responded to these points:


[O]nly three members of the Central Committee survived the Stalinist terror. Two of them, Kollontai and Stassova had retired from active politics completely before the purges (Kollontai had also recanted her political opinions while Stassove had retired from active politics in the early twenties when Lenin was alive). This leaves only one other person - Muranov, who was involved in politics as a Stalinist who survived. All the rest of the Bolshevik Part Central Committee that was alive at the time of the Stalinist purges were murdered by the regime. Out of six members of the original Politburo during the 1917 Revolution who lived until the Purges, only Stalin wasn't murdered. None from the first Council of People's Commissars formed in 1917 except Stalin who was alive at the time of his counter-revolutionary terror survived from it.

(...)

A very small amount of Old Bolsheviks survived the purges. The most significant one was Krupskaya who had said that had Lenin been alive, he'd be the first to be shot by Stalin's regime - she was being closely wathed of course. There were very few Old Bolsheviks who became Stalinists, and they were ones that did not have prominent roles during the revolution. The most well known Bolsheviks who became Stalinists were Kalinin and Voroshilov. The most prominent role played by Kalinin was the rather sinister role in the supression of Kronstadt, openly lying in order to get it suppressed before Lenin's death, as for Voroshilov he became a member of the Central Committee in 1921 and that was the most significant thing he had done. There were a few other old Bolsheviks who supported Stalin, such as Molotov, Kaganovich and Mikoyan - although none of them had any distinctive qualities or specific influence as opposed to the Bolshevik leaders murdered during the purges.

(...)

In total, about 100,000 members of the Bolshevik Party were arrested, many of whom were tortured and murdered (http://www.answers.com/topic/the-great-purges (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.answers.com/topic/the-great-purges)). In 1922 there were only 44,148 Old Bolsheviks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Bolsheviks).
Luckily the October Revolution was accomplished not by the party but by the Russian proletariatCertainly, but the proletariat was suppressed even before the party itself was suppressed.


If Hitler were allied with the UK and the USA they wouldn't have published horror stories about him and possibly appoint him for "man of the year".Well certainly. Imperialist propaganda (a category which includes the Russian propaganda of the time) always depends on alliences and rivalries. This is why there was negative propaganda as well as why there was positive propaganda in different periods. This is exactly the point. The exact same thing is the case regarding the relations between the Nazis and the Western Powers, and the Nazis and the USSR. The point is that Russia was getting no special treatment here.

If we look at facts though, how Stalin entered the League of Nations, how he made pacts of friendship with imperialist powers and formed alliences with imperialist powers against other imperialist powers, how he closed down the Comintern a a gesture of good will, it is clear that the imperialists did see Stalin's regime as one of their own - and they were right.


Yes, and I'm trying to refute the lies about Stalin and the absurd theories about his leadership which were brought up by anti-communists.You are miseranly failing then, since you have not refuted a single lie yet but are repeating many old ones yourself.


See, you think Stalin and the USSR were reactionary and counter-revolutionary and that everybody who was killed were all good communists and that they were killed for no other reson than Stalin's hunger for power and his reactionary plans.What I am arguing first is that the overwhelming majority of the Bolshevik Party of 1917, the Bolshevik Party who played a very important and leading role in the workers' revolution, was murdered. This includes both the party leadership and the rank and file. I have not made a single comment in regards to concepts such as being "good" or being "bad". Nor have I said it was because of Stalin's lust for power. I would say they were rather killed prescisely because of their prominent role in the October Revolution, prescisely because most of them were revolutionaries who at the time of the revolution fulfilled their task succesfully. The point I am making is that if you think that the CPSU of the 30s was a revolutionary party, there is no way you can think that the Bolshevik Party of 1917 was also a revolutionary party since the former was murdering the latter.


I think that those people accused in the Moscow trial were traitors, reactionaries and counter-revolutionariesOK, so you think that an overwhelming majority of the Bolshevik Party of 1917 were traitors, reactionaries and counter-revolutionaries.

You are entitled to your opinion.


We can't convince each other ... trying to counter his theories/positions/arguments I am not trying to convince you, I am simply trying to defend the legacy of tens of thousands of communist martyrs, who were murdered disgracefully by a counter-revolutionary regime and whose bodies covered with lies and slanders.

Nor am I trying to counter your arguements, I am simply posting facts against claims.

[Leo]

So Lenin approved the existence of a Vanguard, but Trotsky wanted the workers to organize themselves.

Actually both Lenin and Trotsky approved the existence of a vanguard and wanted te workers to organize themselves.


When Lenin died, Stalin pushed Trotsky away and started killing his comrades.

Well, not just Trotsky's comrades but the majority of the militants of the old Bolshevik Party.


It is fact that Stalin educated his country, boosted industry (or whatever or whatever more he did) but the end doesn't justify the means.

I don't think openin new schools and factories make someone a socialist though.


Before he died, Lenin did not wish for Stalin to be his succesor, as he was cold and was very... how do I say this, radical? I mean, he wasn't afraid of doing things that could do a lot of impact and would do them in a blink of an eye.

Well, I wouldn't say that's the reason.

"Comrade Stalin in becoming General Secretary has concentrated an immense power into his hands and I am not sure that he always knows how to use it with sufficient prudence." (Lenin's testament)

"Stalin is too rude and this defect, although quite tolerable in our midst and in dealing among us Communists, becomes intolerable in a General Secretary. That is why I suggest that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post and appointing another man in his stead who in all other respects differs from Comrade Stalin in having only one advantage, namely, that of being more tolerant, more loyal, more polite and more considerate to the comrades, less capricious, etc. This circumstance may appear to be a negligible detail. But I think that from the standpoint of safeguards against a split and from the standpoint of what I wrote above about the relationship between Stalin and Trotsky it is not a minor detail, but it is a detail which can assume decisive importance" ( 4 January 1924).


However, had Trotsky gained the support and won... I don't know, assuming he had lots of support, atleast I suppose there would be no deaths (yes I know that lots of workers in the gulags were prisoners from the civil war they were having) but I'm afraid that Trotsky wouldn't be so harsh in the war. And instead of fighting, Stalin could have tried some agreement (I'm not sure he did or not)

If Trotsky won, maybe he could have promoted the propagation of the revolution across the world. Maybe it would become stronger and trying to grow with propaganda everywhere.

Trotsky at one point did have enough support to remove Stalin from his position and sit on Stalin's chair himself, but he was capable of seeing that the matter was not one of individual leaders but one of classes, and the question of which class rules. As long as the proletariat did not stop the ongoing bourgeois counter-revolution, who stayed at the top of the Russian state either had to become Stalin or would have been ousted by the ruling class.

[Rjevan]

This is a lie. Lenin never "wanted" "socialism" in one country, he didn't even see it as a possibility:

The Russian revolution is only one detachment of the world socialist army, and the success and triumph of the revolution that we have accomplished depends on the action of this army. This is a fact that no one amongst us forgets (...). The Russian proletariat is conscious of its revolutionary isolation, and it clearly sees that its victory has the indispensable condition and fundamental premise of the united intervention of the entire world proletariat". (Lenin, Report to the Factory Committees of the Province of Moscow, 28 July, 1918).
I also have two nice Lenin quotes:

Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country alone. After expropriating the capitalists and organising their own socialist production, the victorious proletariat of that country will arise against the rest of the world. ("On the Slogan for a United States of Europe", 1915)
...
I know that there are, of course, sages who think they are very clever and even call themselves Socialists, who assert that power should not have been seized until the revolution had broken out in all countries. They do not suspect that by speaking in this way they are deserting the revolution and going over to the side of the bourgeoisie. To wait until the toiling classes bring about a revolution on an international scale means that everybody should stand stock-still in expectation. That is nonsense (Speech at the All-Russian Central Executive Committee meeting with the Moscow Soviet, 14th May 1918)
Couldn't be expressed better!
And finally, Stalin in The October Revolution and the Tactics of the Russian Communists (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/12.htm):

One need only compare this quotation with the above quotations from Lenin's works on the dictatorship of the proletariat to perceive the great chasm that separates Lenin's theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat from Trotsky's theory of "permanent revolution."
Lenin speaks of the alliance between the proletariat and the laboring strata of the peasantry as the basis of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Trotsky sees a "hostile collision " between "the proletarian vanguard" and "the broad masses of the peasantry."
Lenin speaks of the leadership of the toiling and exploited masses by the proletariat. Trotsky sees "contradictions in the position of a workers' government in a backward country with an overwhelmingly peasant population."
According to Lenin, the revolution draws its strength primarily from among the workers and peasants of Russia itself.
According to Trotsky, the necessary strength can be found only "in the arena of the world proletarian revolution."
But what if the world revolution is fated to arrive with some delay? Is there any ray of hope for our revolution? Trotsky offers no ray of hope; for "the contradictions in the position of a workers' government . . . could be solved only . . . in the arena of the world proletarian revolution." According to this plan, there is but one prospect left for our revolution: to vegetate in its own contradictions and rot away while waiting for the world revolution.


It is now known that the confessions were given only after great psychological pressure and torture had been applied to the defendants. From the accounts of former GPU officer Alexander Orlov and others the methods used to extract the confessions are known: repeated beatings, torture, making prisoners stand or go without sleep for days on end, and threats to arrest and execute the prisoners' families. For example, Kamenev's teenage son was arrested and charged with terrorism. After months of such interrogation, the defendants were driven to despair and exhaustion. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Trials source: Orlov, Alexander, The Secret History of Stalin's Crimes, Random House, 1953)

Anastas Mikoyan and Molotov later claimed that Bukharin was never tortured, but it is now known that his interrogators were given order, "beating permitted," and were under great pressure to extract confessions out of the "star" defendant. Bukharin held out for three months, but threats to his young wife and infant son, combined with "methods of physical influence" wore him down. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Trials Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment" Pages 364-5)

So Wikipedia, a guy who published his book in 1953 (when Stalin was dead and everybody came up with - mostly negative- myths about him) with the already amusing title "The Secret Histories of Stalin's Crimes" (sounds damn sensationalist and fits very well into the new line Nikita and his friends planned) and then Robert Conquest, an anti-communist par excellence, "actively promoting anti-communist ideas" (now I quote Wikipedia) and I know he was once in the Communist Party but well, Mussolini was a socialist once... and then his book is published in 1968 right during the Cold War - so yes, a book by a passionate anti-communist published during the Cold War is totally convincing, I'm absolutely sure that he had no reasons at all to lie.


Even Khrushchev, who was the part of the same regime, admits that the statements were taken under torture, in his secret speech. There of course also are numerous reports coming from prisoners.

Haha, Khrushchev? :lol:
- Khrushchev! This slimy little traitor, this revisionist par excellence! You yourself let it look through that he murdered and purged - and this with a passion that Stalin was shocked and called: "So many? This is absolutely impossible, that can't all be counter-revolutionaries!" when seeing the list of Nikita's victims. And the secret speech - this manifest of the revisionists, which he set up to cover up his own deeds, present Stalin as a demon and get rid of his legacy, Marxism-Leninism and the left "Stalinists", like Molotov which he only managed with the help of Zhukov's soldiers and illegal tricks in the Committee and therefore with a coup!
It should not go like "Even Khrushchev, ... admits that the statements were taken under torture, in his secret speech." but "Needless to say and of course Khrushchev, ... admits that the statements were taken under torture, in his secret speech!"

Quoting Khrushchev doesn't prove I'm wrong, this rather strenghtens my point of view because everything this "communist" said is best taken as quite the opposite and when this dubious suspect and notorious liar who had more than one skeletons in his closet says that Stalin ordered torture my immediate gut reaction is to believe that Stalin explicit forbid torture!


This is simply false. The representatives of the world bourgeoisie who watched the trials were saying that they were fair (you yourself proudly quoted them, don't you remember?).
Like Conquest, who didn't watch them but still was a prepresentative of the world bourgeoisie and therefore would have to applaude Stalin?
Besides, if my quotes are showing that they wrote nothing about torture I personally find it more realistic to assume that there simply was no torture than going for theories about bourgeoise-soviet-imperialist conspiracies, set up by dubious persons decades later...


It is actually documented that Kirov's murder was organized by the NKDV
I know, some historicans or the usual Orlov guys document this murder being organised by the NKVD while others document it is totally impossible that the NKVD organised this and Stalin was both, furious and massively depressed because of the loss of one of his closest friends. Even Simon Sebag Montefiore writes in his "Stalin - The Court of the Red Tzar" that it can not be excluded that the NKVD at least knew about this assassination attempt but on the other hand it can also be not excluded that the NKVD simply messed things up and failed to protect Kirov and later killed Kirov's bodyguard who was on the way to Moscow to report Stalin more about the sloppiness of the NKVD - and as you can already see here, Montefiore is far from being a "Stalinist".


Actually a prominent Bolshevik and the future leader of the Baku Commune, Stepan Shahumyan directly accused Stalin with being an Okhrana agent, and his view was shared by some other Bolsheviks as well and the relation between Stalin and the Okhrana is a bit suspicious but there is no clear evidence proving that.

Yes, I know that it is said that Stalin had connections to the Okhrana but as Montefiore expresses it: "Both, Yezhov and Beria, knowing that Stalin would liquidate them sooner or later started secret researches on this topic preparing to have something in the hand to overthrow Stalin without him even suspecting anything. Yet both found absolutely nothing. It is almost impossible that such evidence existed with two NKVD leaders with almost absolutistic power and unlimited possibilities not finding the even least hint."

Besides, the Okhrana even founded own revolutionary organisations in order to make the real revolutionaries paranoid and make them turn against each other, so I find it rather likely that they set up this theory about one of the leading Bolsheviks to weaken the party.


Funny how you haven't responded to these points:
[O]nly three members of the Central Committee survived the Stalinist terror.
...
None from the first Council of People's Commissars formed in 1917 except Stalin who was alive at the time of his counter-revolutionary terror survived from it.
I'm pretty sure that Kollontai was not only in the Central Committee but also in the Council of People's Commissars.


If we look at facts though, how Stalin entered the League of Nations, how he made pacts of friendship with imperialist powers and formed alliences with imperialist powers against other imperialist powers, how he closed down the Comintern a a gesture of good will, it is clear that the imperialists did see Stalin's regime as one of their own - and they were right.

I never had the impression that any western regime saw "Stalin's regime as one of their own". As I said, before the war many even prefered Hitler and Stalin never had any interest in allying with the capitalist states, he knew that they would attack in the end and he prepared for this.


You are miseranly failing then, since you have not refuted a single lie yet but are repeating many old ones yourself.

Oh my, just what I said before. You see it this way, I think you have not revealed "the truth" but are repeating many old lies of anti-USSR folks.


I would say they were rather killed prescisely because of their prominent role in the October Revolution, prescisely because most of them were revolutionaries who at the time of the revolution fulfilled their task succesfully.
But this implies that Stalin was an anti-revolutionary who killed all true revolutionaries, an argumentation I have last seen used by a Russian nazi, praising Stalin for saving the "Slavic race" and stopping the "Jewish-Bolshevik-threat"... it was not convincing then and it is not convincing now.


OK, so you think that an overwhelming majority of the Bolshevik Party of 1917 were traitors, reactionaries and counter-revolutionaries.

It is actually not that an overwhelming majority, I never claimed that every party member who was killed was a traitor (see e.g. Khrushchev's killings and other "overeager" persons who were simply out of control, like Yezhov) but as I said before being once a leftist (Mussolini) doesn't mean that you will stay one for life.


I am not trying to convince you, I am simply trying to defend the legacy of tens of thousands of communist martyrs, who were murdered disgracefully by a counter-revolutionary regime and whose bodies covered with lies and slanders.

Nor am I trying to counter your arguements, I am simply posting facts against claims.
Same as two quotes above, I would be more than lucky if I could convince you but I don't think so, so I'm also just trying to go against those "Stalin was a murderous anti-communist monster" claims, which covered him with lies and slander by people like Khrushchev.

You don't acknowledge my sources as facts and I have to say that I'm having a hard time seeing those sources (most of them, to be fair) you bring up not as slenderous propaganda by some anti-communists with too much fantasy and spare time.

[Leo]

Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country alone. After expropriating the capitalists and organising their own socialist production, the victorious proletariat of that country will arise against the rest of the world. ("On the Slogan for a United States of Europe", 1915)

Here Lenin is talking about the possibility of the victory of socialism “in one isolated capitalist country.” This idea is still more crudely and sharply formulated in the fourth chapter, which says that:

“The dictatorship [?] of the world proletariat ... can be realized only as a result of the victory of socialism [?] in individual countries when the newly formed proletarian republics will establish a federation with those already in existence.”


If we are to interpret the words “victory of socialism” merely as another expression for the dictatorship of the proletariat, then we will arrive at a general statement which is irrefutable for all and which should be formulated less equivocally.

It is simply a distortion to say that he is talking about the possibility of constructing a socialist society in a single country.


I know that there are, of course, sages who think they are very clever and even call themselves Socialists, who assert that power should not have been seized until the revolution had broken out in all countries. They do not suspect that by speaking in this way they are deserting the revolution and going over to the side of the bourgeoisie. To wait until the toiling classes bring about a revolution on an international scale means that everybody should stand stock-still in expectation. That is nonsense (Speech at the All-Russian Central Executive Committee meeting with the Moscow Soviet, 14th May 1918) This of course is true. Yet there is an actual difference between the working class taking power in one part of the world and the working class building a socialist society in one part of the world. The latter has as a precondition the working class taking power in all parts of the world.

Here's ten more Lenin quotes for world revolution and against socialism in one country:

“To approach the prospects of a social revolution within national boundaries is to fall victim to the same national narrowness which constitutes the substance of social-patriotism. Vaillant to his dying day considered France the promised land of social revolution; and it is precisely from this standpoint that he stood for national defense to the end. Lensch and Co. (some hypocritically and others sincerely) consider that Germany’s defeat means first of all the destruction of the basis of social revolution ... In general it should not be forgotten that in social-patriotism there is, along-side of the most vulgar reformism, a national revolutionary Messianism which deems that its own national state, whether because of its industrial level or because of its ‘democratic’ form and revolutionary conquests, is called upon to lead humanity towards socialism or towards ‘democracy.’ If the victorious revolution mere really conceivable within the boundaries of a single more developed nation, this Messianism together with the program of national defense would have some relative historical justification. But as a matter of fact this is inconceivable. To fight for the preservation of a national basis of revolution by such methods as undermine the international ties of the proletariat, actually means to undermine the revolution itself, which can begin on a national basis but which cannot be completed on that basis under the present economic, military, and political interdependence of the European states, which was never before revealed so forcefully as during the present war. This interdependence which will directly and immediately condition the concerted action on the part of the European proletariat in the revolution is expressed by the slogan of the United States of Europe.” (Lenin, Works, Vol.III, part 1, pp.90f.)

On March 7, 1918, he said a propos of the Brest-Litovsk peace: “This is a lesson to us because the absolute truth is that without a revolution in Germany, we shall perish.” (Lenin, Works, Vol. XV, p. 132, Russian [old] ed.)

“Russia (the land of poverty) will become such a land (the land of plenty) if we cast away all pessimism and phrasemongering; if clenching our teeth, we gather all our might, strain every nerve and muscle, if we understand that salvation is possible only along the road of international socialist revolution that we have entered.” Works, Vol.XV, p.165.

A week later he said: “World imperialism cannot live side by side with a victorious advancing social revolution.” (Ibid., p. 175.)

A few weeks later, on April 23, Lenin said: “Our backwardness has thrust us forward and we will perish if we are unable to hold out until we meet with the mighty support of the insurrectionary workers of other countries.” (Ibid., p. 187.)

But perhaps this was all said under the special influence of the Brest-Litovsk crisis? Well,no. In March 1919, Lenin again repeated: “We do not live merely in a state but in a system of states and the existence of the Soviet Republic side by side with imperialist states for any length of time is inconceivable. In the end one or the other must triumph.”(Works, Vol. XVI, p. 102.)

A year later, on April 7, 1920, Lenin reiterates: “Capitalism, if taken on an international scale, is even now, not only in a military but also in an economic sense, stronger than the Soviet power. We must proceed from this fundamental consideration and never forget it.” (Works, Vol. XVII, p. 102.)

On November 27, 1920, Lenin, in dealing with the question of concessions, said: “We have now passed from the arena of war to the arena of peace and we have not forgotten that war will come again. As long as capitalism and socialism remain side by side we cannot live peacefully—the one or the other will be the victor in the end. An obituary will be sung either over the death of world capitalism or the death of the Soviet Republic. At present we have only a respite in the war.” (Ibid., p. 398.)

But perhaps the continued existence of the Soviet Republic impelled Lenin to “recognize his mistake” and renounce his “lack of faith in the inner force” of the October Revolution?

At the Third Congress of the Comintern in July 1921, Lenin declared in the theses on the tactics of the Communist Party of Russia: “An equilibrium has been created, which though extremely precarious and unstable, nevertheless enables the socialist republic to maintain its existence within capitalist surroundings, although of course not for any great length of time.”

Again, on July 5, 1921, Lenin stated point-blank at one of the sessions of the Congress: ‘It was clear to us that without aid from the international world revolution, a victory of the proletarian revolution is impossible. Even prior to the revolution, as well as after it, we thought that the revolution would also occur either immediately or at least very soon in other backward countries and in the more highly developed capitalist countries, otherwise we would perish. Notwithstanding this conviction, we did our utmost to preserve the Soviet system under any circumstances and at all costs, because we know that we are working not only for ourselves but also for the international revolution.” (Works, Vol. XVIII, part 1, p. 321.)


So Wikipedia, a guy who published his book in 1953 (when Stalin was dead and everybody came up with - mostly negative- myths about him) with the already amusing title "The Secret Histories of Stalin's Crimes" (sounds damn sensationalist and fits very well into the new line Nikita and his friends planned) and then Robert Conquest, an anti-communist par excellence, "actively promoting anti-communist ideas" (now I quote Wikipedia) and I know he was once in the Communist Party but well, Mussolini was a socialist once...And Stalin was a member of the Bolshevik party once.

The reason why mainstream academics did not report Stalin's crimes was, as explained before, the support of the world ruling class to the destruction of the Bolshevik Party. When the deed was done, and when the leading figure of the deed was dead, they all started talking about it, an example of the typical hypocrisy of the world bourgeoisie. Does not make what was reported false though.


Khrushchev! This slimy little traitor, this revisionist par excellence! You yourself let it look through that he murdered and purgedHe did, most certainly. He was the part of the same ruling class, the same regime as Stalin. Was no more of a traitor than Stalin either. This is exactly the point: someone who had been a part of Stalin's regime, a conductor of the purges and murders himself, admitting the regime did, and doing this in the name of the regime is quite an evidence.


Like Conquest, who didn't watch them but still was a prepresentative of the world bourgeoisie and therefore would have to applaude Stalin?You yourself said he was a member of the official CP. He was actually a member of the official CP at the time of the purges. I would say he was applauding Stalin at the time.


I know, some historicans or the usual Orlov guys document this murder being organised by the NKVD while others document it is totally impossible that the NKVD organised this and Stalin was both, furious and massively depressed because of the loss of one of his closest friends.I know, some historicans or the usual Orlov guys document this murder being organised by the NKVD while others document it is totally impossible that the NKVD organised this and Stalin was both, furious and massively depressed because of the loss of one of his closest friends.This obviously was the image Stalin was trying to present the public but Kirov was starting to oppose Stalin's every move which I am sure a bourgeois egomaniac like Stalin did not really enjoy.

It is a fact that the NKDV did recruit Kirov's assassin.


Yes, I know that it is said that Stalin had connections to the Okhrana but as Montefiore expresses it: "Both, Yezhov and Beria, knowing that Stalin would liquidate them sooner or later started secret researches on this topic preparing to have something in the hand to overthrow Stalin without him even suspecting anything. Yet both found absolutely nothing. It is almost impossible that such evidence existed with two NKVD leaders with almost absolutistic power and unlimited possibilities not finding the even least hint."

Besides, the Okhrana even founded own revolutionary organisations in order to make the real revolutionaries paranoid and make them turn against each other, so I find it rather likely that they set up this theory about one of the leading Bolsheviks to weaken the party. Stalin was not a leading Bolshevik but an obscure secondary figure when Shaumyan and other actually leading Bolsheviks brought this up actually. I don't think the arguement saying that Beria and Yezhov not finding it discredits the possibility is really an intelligent one: when the Okhrana archives were searched in the early years of the revolution, obviously nothing was found. Had he had documents that could have been found showing that he was an Okhrana agent, his fate would not have been different from that of Malinovsky and we probably would have been discussing a Stalin with a different name. Documents can of course be destroyed though, Shaumyan was quite a great Bolshevik leader whose word I would value more than Stalin's and there were suspicious aspects in Stalin's activities before the revolution but there is little point in speculating.

Of course in order to defend your great hero, you are ready to accuse an honest Bolshevik militant who gave his life for the struggle and unity of the working class like Shaumyan of being Okhrana, setting up this theory to weaken the party.


I'm pretty sure that Kollontai was not only in the Central Committee but also in the Council of People's Commissars.Kollontai was not in the first Council of People's Commissars, but was a People's Commissar: http://www.marxists.org/glossary/orgs/c/o.htm#cpc

But congratulations, the regime you support allowed one People's Commissar to survive, who was completely retired from actual politics and who was in exile that is.


I never had the impression that any western regime saw "Stalin's regime as one of their own". Yeah, I'm sure you are trying very hard to prevent having that impression.


As I said, before the war many even prefered Hitler and Stalin never had any interest in allying with the capitalist states, he knew that they would attack in the end and he prepared for this.... by becoming allies with Hitler first. Yeah, that worked out.


But this implies that Stalin was an anti-revolutionary who killed all true revolutionariesVery clever. Of course he did not individually do it but was the chief representative of the bourgeois regime that did it but you seem to have gotten the glimpse of the general idea.


, an argumentation I have last seen used by a Russian nazi, praising Stalin for saving the "Slavic race" and stopping the "Jewish-Bolshevik-threat"... I am not surprised that Russian Nazis admire Stalin for that, among many other things.


it was not convincing then and it is not convincing now.I don't really care what you find convincing and what you don't find convincing, and I am not really interested in convining you.


It is actually not that an overwhelming majorityAn overwhelming majority of the Old Bolshevik militants were killed.


I never claimed that every party member who was killed was a traitorYou seem to think most were though, except of course those whose murder was dealt by Khruschev who obviously was, I believe, the devils own incarnation.


You don't acknowledge my sources as factsThis is not true: I refute what your sources say, I do not question the legitimacy of your sources and claim without any basis that they are lies, I simply point out where they are wrong, where they are biased, where they are mistaken. There is a difference.